Tuesday, February 3, 2009

World Peace Cookies are the gateway cookie, the trapdoor in the floor that led into all this Tuesdays with Dorie madness. In April 2007 I found myself in a van headed for Ann Arbor, MI with a pile of actors and far too many pieces of furniture. In her goodness, actor and friend Molly had brought a large tupperware of cookies to get us through. Here is where I admit something--I am not always too excited by baked goods. I mean, sure, I love good ones, and I am grateful for the effort, but because I make a lot of them, sometimes I'm more excited when other people provide something else (unless it's good bread--you can never have too much). These cookies, however, were more than welcome, they were amazing. Several cuts above your average bake sale offering. Every time we put one in our mouths, we were delighted and surprised. Made the 11 hours pass like no time.

When I got home from that fateful trip, the only thing I wanted was the recipe, which Molly provided, mentioning that it came from a new book she'd bought, called Baking: From My Home to Yours. I figured that if any of the rest of the recipes came halfway up to that standard, it was worth sneaking a copy from the book club I used to work for (yes, sometimes I sneaked and ordered myself copies--the overhead was low). And it was. But the World Peace Cookies, or Korova Cookies as they were once known, are the true money recipe of the book, the best for the least effort, like the NYTimes chocolate chip cookies of recent fame, the best at lifting something ordinary well above, without pretension. And, unlike some recipes, it's not just an 'I added cornmeal and put nectarines here, and you couldn't have figured it out yourself from the twelve other variations here,' it's something clean and wonderful and simple that I would never have thought of quite that way.

I made this batch a little late, because I had promised them to the cookie maniacs at my new internship, at Democracy Now! Chocolate cookies and progressive radio--World Peace for sure. Because everyone should know how to make these, here is a link to the recipe.